Because the day to day weather is highly variable one cannot attribute any
specific weather event (such as the current Asian, South American and Australian floods) to man-made global warming. However increased greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution
leads successively to global warming, increased sea temperature, increased
evaporation and thence to increased precipitation. Indeed the incidence of
floods has greatly increased throughout the world over the last 60 years.
Accordingly one cannot exclude the likelihood of a contribution of man-made
global warming to extreme precipitation events.

The
2010-2011 Queensland, Australia, flood disaster has so far killed 16 (40
missing), forced thousands from their homes, adversely affected 70 towns and
200,000 people, flooded major parts of the capital city Brisbane, including the
Central Business District, and cost circa $13 billion. [1].

This
present Queensland and Eastern Australian disaster - coming shortly after
the disastrous 2010 Russian heat wave (1/3 of the Russian wheat crop destroyed
in fires) and the horrendous 2010 Pakistani floods (24 million homeless) and
contemporaneous with the Brazil floods (500 dead, thousands homeless), Sri
Lanka floods (23 dead, 1 million homeless) and Philippines floods (42 dead,
400,000 displaced) - has again raised concerns about the connection between
man-made global warming from greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution and extreme
weather events such as floods and drought.

For
advice we must turn to expert climate scientists, meteorologists and other
science-informed citizens. At the outset it must be clearly re-iterated that weather is
variable and accordingly one cannot say that the severity of a specific event
such as the La Niña-associated
Queensland floods
can be attributed to climate change. However increased precipitation derives
from increased sea temperature and increased evaporation and accordingly
man-made global warming to a global average of +0.8C above the 1900 value is
contributing to extreme precipitation events (more heat means more
evaporation and hence more precipitation).

Set
out below in the public interest are 90 expert, informed, referenced opinions
about the link between man-made global warming and increased precipitation events.

1. The US National Academy of Sciences (2010): “Extreme
precipitation is likely to increase as the atmospheric moisture
content increases in a warming climate. Typical magnitudes are 3-10per cent per
degree C warming, with potentially larger values in the tropics, and in the
most extreme events globally.” [2].

2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, 2007: “Observations are
consistent with physical understanding regarding the expected linkage between
water vapour and temperature, and with intensification of precipitation events
in a warmer world. Column and upper-tropospheric water vapour have
increased, providing important support for the hypothesis of simple physical
models that specific humidity increases in a warming world and represents an
important positive feedback to climate change. Consistent with rising amounts
of water vapour in the atmosphere, there are widespread increases in the
numbers of heavy precipitation events and increased likelihood of flooding
events in many land regions, even those where there has been a reduction in
total precipitation. Observations of changes in ocean salinity independently
support the view that the Earth’s hydrologic cycle has changed, in a manner
consistent with observations showing greater precipitation and river runoff
outside the tropics and subtropics, and increased transfer of freshwater from
the ocean to the atmosphere at lower latitudes.” [3].

3. Queensland Scientific
Advisory Group (SAG) Report. In 2010 the Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) Report
to the Queensland Government and the Local Government Association of Queensland
advised that "a. an increase in rainfall intensity is likely; b. the
available scientific literature indicates this increased rainfall intensity to
be in the range of 3-10 per cent per degree of global warming; c. the SAG
understands the preference for a single figure to support policy development.
More detailed analysis is required to firmly establish such a figure and this
work will be undertaken as part of the review of Australia’s Rainfall and
Runoff [AR&R]. This document will become the authoritative source of
information on the issue when released in 2014. However the SAG would consider
a figure of 5% increase in rainfall intensity per degree of global warming
reasonable for informing policy development in the interim... Extreme precipitation is likely to increase
as the atmospheric moisture content increases in a warming climate…If this recommendation turns
out to underestimate the changes (and the evidence produced to date would
suggest it will) then further increases will be recommended through revision of
the AR&R. Taking this first step now will make these increases more
acceptable in the future.” [4].

4. Final Report of
the Queensland Inland Flooding Study (2010): “ Executive summary. Flooding causes significant
impacts on Queensland
communities and the economy- and with our changing climate, flooding events are
likely to become more frequent and more intense. Effective land use planning
will ensure that our communities are ready for the impacts of climate change…
Various scientific methodologies were examined to identify benchmark figures
fro planning to take account of the projected impacts of climate change on
flood risks. These methods were based on the theory that precipitable water in
the atmosphere will increase as global temperature increases. Analysis was
undertaken to determine the extent of evidence in the Queensland historical record for this
physical relationship. This analysis included both land surface temperature and
sea surface temperatures. The recent wok of Rafter and Abbes (2010) was also
considered, which uses extreme value analyses to calculate the percentage
increases of intense rainfall from a suite of Global Climate Models. The
project also took into account the recently released report from the US
National Academy of Sciences (2010) which concludes that: “Extreme
precipitation is likely to increase as the atmospheric moisture
content increases in a warming climate. Typical magnitudes are 3-10per cent per
degree C warming, with potentially larger values in the tropics, and in the
most extreme events globally.” [5].

5. The Queensland
Government itself understands the connection between global warming and increased precipitation
events while remaining notoriously committed to fossil fuel burning and
methanogenic livestock production. The Final Report of the Inland Flooding Study,
2010, was released by Queensland Climate Change and Sustainability
Minister Kate Jones at the Local Government Association of Queensland's (LGAQ)
annual environment conference on the Gold Coast. "What we're asking is
that councils use this science to build into their flood risks an increase in
flooding as a consequence of climate change. What we'll see is rainfall
intensity increasing by five per cent, which will mean they'll need to build
that into their flood planning… [ planning for a once-in-a-century flood isn't
enough to protect inland areas in the future]…Instead we're recommending local
governments adopt a climate-change factor for increased rainfall intensity of
five per cent per degree of global warming, and incorporate this into local
flood studies and planning schemes. This will increase the amount of land
considered flood prone over time and enable councils to make informed decisions
and provide better advice to residents. This is the first time definitive
advice on how to plan for more intense flooding under climate change has been
provided in Queensland."[6].

6. Australian Bureau of Meteorology (2010): " Data collected by the
Bureau of Meteorology show that the Australian mean rainfall total for 2010 was
690 mm, well above the long-term average of 465 mm. As a result, 2010
was Australia’s
wettest year since 2000 and the third-wettest year on record (records commence
in 1900). The only month to record a national monthly total below the long term
average during 2010 was June. This means that 11 months of the year experienced
above average rainfall, an occurrence observed only once previously, in 1973...
Based on preliminary data (to November 30), sea surface temperatures in the
Australian region during 2010 were +0.54 °C above the 1961 to 1990 average.
This is the warmest value on record for the Australian region. Individual high
monthly sea surface temperature records were also set during 2010 in March,
April, June, September, October and November. Along with favourable hemispheric
circulation associated with the 2010 La Niña, very warm sea surface
temperatures contributed to the record rainfall and very high humidity across
eastern Australia
during winter and spring." [7].

7. Professor David Karoly (Professor of Meteorology and an ARC Federation
Fellow, University of Melbourne School of Earth Sciences and a lead author of
the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC) commenting on the 2011 La Niña-connected
Queensland floods and climate change: ''Australia has been known for more than
a hundred years as a land of droughts and flooding rains, but what climate
change means is Australia becomes a land of more droughts and worse flooding
rains… On some measures, it's the strongest La Niña in recorded history … [but]
we also have record-high ocean temperatures in northern Australia, which means more
moisture evaporating into the air. And that means lots of heavy rain.'' [8].

8. Professor David Karoly (Professor of Meteorology and an ARC Federation
Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences, University
of Melbourne, and a lead author of the
Nobel Prize-winning IPCC) on Queensland
floods, climate change and extreme precipitation: “What gives very heavy
rainfall is high Indian Ocean temperatures and
La Niña in the Pacific. This year we have both of those, and both are at record
highs… (presented data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology shows a marked
increase in Australian region December sea temperature: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=sst&area=aus&season=12&ave_yr=11
) …This (pronounced long-term warming trend in the waters near Australia) isn’t
just climate variability. This is man-made climate change… we can’t say this
individual event [in Queensland] is due to long term climate change, but we can
say the overall global sea surface temperature increases are due to
anthropogenic [man-made] forcings.” [9].

9. Professor David Karoly (Professor of Meteorology and an ARC Federation
Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, and a lead
author of the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC) on Queensland floods, climate change
and extreme precipitation: “"What we are seeing over the last 50 years and
over the last 100 years is a change in this pattern of extremes with more hot
and more wet extremes in northern Australia and more hot and more dry extremes
in southern Australia and that pattern is exactly what we would expect from
climate change due to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” [10].

10. Professor Ian Lowe on the Queensland
floods, extreme weather events and man-made global warming: “The Queensland floods are
another reminder of what climate science has been telling us for 25 years. As
well as a general warming and increasing sea levels, it predicted more frequent
extreme events: floods, droughts, heatwaves and severe bushfires. The decline
in rainfall in south-western WA and the increasing rainfall in the tropics are
exactly what the science has been telling us to expect. It is still too early
to say with certainty that climate change is responsible for the strong El Nino
event which brought devastating drought to eastern Australia and the equally strong La
Niña event which has produced the terrible floods. But they are exactly what
climate science has been warning us about. If we don’t want to see
more events like the 2009 Victorian bushfires and the floods now happening, we
need a concerted program of action to reduce greenhouse pollution.” [11].

11. Professor Ian Lowe (president of the Australian Conservation Foundation; Professor
of Science, Technology and Society and former Head of the School of Science at
Griffith University, as well as an adjunct professor at Sunshine Coast University
and Flinders University) on
the Queensland floods: “The Queensland floods are another reminder of
what climate science has been telling us for 25 years, like the recent
long-running drought, the 2009 heatwaves and the dreadful Victorian bushfires.
As well as a general warming, increasing sea levels and altered rainfall
patterns, climate modellers confidently predicted more frequent extreme events:
floods, droughts, heatwaves and severe bushfires. The decline in rainfall in Western Australia's
south-west and the increasing rainfall in the tropics are exactly what the
science has been telling us to expect. It is still too early to say with
certainty that climate change is responsible for the strong El Niño event that
brought devastating drought to eastern Australia and the equally strong La
Niña event that has produced the terrible floods. But they are exactly what
climate science has been warning us about since the 1980s.’ [12].

12. Professor Neville Nicholls (an Australian Research Council Professorial
Fellow, Monash University, Melbourne):
"Is the [current] La Nina that strong because of global warming, or is
global warming exacerbating the effect of La Niña? Honestly, we don't know. But
just because we don't now doesn't mean it's not happening. You'd have to be a
brave person to say it [climate change] is not having some sort of effect. I
can guarantee you in the next couple of years people will start looking back at
this event and asking was it so unusually strong because of global
warming." [13].

13. Professor Will Steffen (executive director of the ANU Climate Change
Institute; Australian Government Climate Change Committee member): "As the
climate warms, there is more water vapour in the atmosphere. This means that
there is a probability that there will more intense rainfall events around the
world. There is some evidence that we can see them now. I think the place where
the best data is the US."
[13].

14, Professor Will Steffen
(executive director of the Australian
National University's
(ANU) Climate Change Institute) on Queensland
floods and global warming: "What we can say about the Queensland floods is there is a strong La
Niña, which tends to give this heavy rainfall, but in addition to that there
are very high sea surface temperatures… "(In a US study of rainfall in a heavily
saturated area over the past 100 years) there's been a significant increase (in
rain in the area) since 1980 consistent with a strong warming. There's
definitely a risk and a growing risk that events of this type will become more
frequent as the climate warms. One-in-100-year events would become a one-in-20
or one-in-30-year event as the climate shifts ... we say with some confidence
they are becoming more frequent and they will become more frequent in
future." [14].

15, Professor Matthew England (joint director of the Climate Change Research
Centre at the University of NSW) on record high temperatures and Queensland floods: “Climate change has seen a warming of
waters globally, and the waters north of Australia
are an important part of the climate system for Australia's monsoon rains. They are
at their warmest ever measured and we cannot exclude climate change from
contributing to this warmth, (and) if it is very warm there this enhances
evaporation into the atmosphere, creating moist air… Climate change projections
are pointing to more frequent extreme events, that's to say more flooding
events, more droughts and fires, but whether Australia as a nation sees many
more flooding events or not is still a little bit more complex to pin
down." [14].

16. Professor Barry Brook (Foundation Sir
Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of Climate
Science at The Environment Institute,
University of Adelaide)
on the Queensland disaster and global warming:
“The period 2010-2011 has seen record rainfall and rural flooding events in Australia.
This has culminated this week with the 3rd largest city, Brisbane, being struck
by severely damaging and costly urban floods, inundating the central
business district and overwhelming many thousands of homes and businesses…:The
point of this post is not to try to attribute these extreme weather events
directly to climate change, although I think there is a real influence at work
here. A major factor is one of the strongest La Niñas on record… Climate
change, left unabated, will increase the frequency and severity of natural
disasters. More and more energy is being trapped within the Earth system (see
figure to the right), and it has to be expressed somewhere, sometime. The laws
of physical science dictate nothing less. And it will, in turn, hit the
Australian and World economy hard. Those economic rationalists among us should
heed the reminder that these latest natural events have delivered. Avoided global heating is avoided cost(with
the worst-case scenarios being incalculable). For the general populace’s
opinion on climate change, what will the latest events do? I can’t be sure of
course, but I suspect that it will, in many, awaken within them a deep-seated
horror — “...this could
happen to me”. This personal demon, fed by the graphic reporting we
now get on such events, might well do more than anything else to catalyse a
community consensus for real, effective and urgent action to eliminate fossil
fuels.” [15, 16].

17. Ellen Sandell(national director of the Australian
Youth Climate Coalition and joint Banksia young environmentalist of the year in
2009) re the Queensland
flood disaster:“We
know that any one single extreme weather event cannot be attributed just to
climate change. But we can look at the climate models and predictions, which
all say that in a climate-changed world extreme weather events will become more
frequent and intense. The La Niña phenomenon, the major cause of the increased
rain in south-east Queensland,
gets stronger as sea surface temperatures increase. Warmer air also holds more
water than colder air, and this water eventually has to come down somewhere.
Hence increased rain and floods…I don't want to live in the kind of world we
are previewing right now. We need fundamental change, and it starts with a
price on pollution that rids our economy of polluting energy and creates clean
energy instead. It starts with increased funding for healthy, renewable energy.
It starts with a serious commitment from all political parties to do what is
right and significantly reduce Australia's
greenhouse gas emissions.I hope some good can come out of this tragedy, and
that we use it to have the conversation about what we are going to do this year
to make these solutions a reality.” [17].

18. Parliament of Australia,
Parliamentary Library (that provides carefully researched infomation to members
of the Australian Federal Parliament) : “Are extreme weather
events—severe storms, flooding, droughts, heat waves or extremely violent
cyclones—becoming more common? The answer appears to be 'yes'. Trends towards
more powerful storms and hotter, longer dry periods have been observed,
according to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, and this trend is projected
to continue.” [18].

19. Professor John Holdren
(Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University; Director of the Woods Hole Research Center; recent
Chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and
President Obama’s chief scientific adviser) on climatic disruption (2008): “”Incidence of floods is up
almost everywhere…(figure: Major floods per decade 1950-2000; number of events
per decade on a 0 to 350 scale plotted by decade) …There’s a consistent 50-year
upward trend in every region except Oceania” [note: data source Milennium
Ecosystem Assessment; histograms show that 2000s/1950s ratio about 10
(Americas), 4 (Europe), 10 (Africa), 6.5 (Asia); not shown, Fiji suffered its
worst floods in decades in January 2009 with 11 dead and 9,000 evacuated].
[19].

20. GRID-Arendal (a collaborating centre of the United Nations
Environment Programme ,UNEP): “Number
of flood events by continent and decade since 1950. Roughly 17%
of all the urban land in the United
States is located in the 100-year flood
zone. Likewise, in Japan
about 50% of the population lives on floodplains, which cover only 10% of the
land area. In Bangladesh,
the percentage of floodprone areas is much higher and inundation of more than
half of the country is not uncommon.” [note: data source Milennium Ecosystem Assessment; histograms show that
2000s/1950s ratio about 10 (Americas),
4 (Europe), 10 (Africa), 6.5 (Asia)]. [20].

21. GRID-Arendal (a collaborating centre of the United Nations
Environment Programme ,UNEP):“ Number of Disasters
per Year. Trends in number of reported disasters. Much of the
increase in the number of hazardous events reported is probably due to
significant improvements in information access and also to population growth,
but the number of floods and cyclones reported is still rising compared to
earthquakes. Is global warming affecting the frequency of natural hazards?
(Sources CRED Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2006, 2007) [note: Figure
shows that floods increased 6 fold from 1980 to 2007 whereas earthquakes
scarcely increased at all). [21].

22. Professor Vicky Pope (head of climate change advice at the Met
Office, UK)
explains how a warmer world is a wetter world (2011): "As the average
global temperature increases one would expect the moisture content of the
atmosphere to rise, due to more evaporation from the sea surface. For every 1C
sea surface temperature rise, atmospheric moisture over the oceans increases by
6-8%. Also in general, as more energy and moisture is put into the atmosphere
[by warming], the likelihood of storms, hurricanes and tornadoes
increases." [22].

23. Australian CSIRO-Bureau of
Meteorology report “The State of the Climate” (2010). The present Australian floods have been caused by the current La Niña
phenomenon but have occurred in the context of an increase in sea surface
temperature due to man-made global warming. Thus the Australian CSIRO-Bureau of
Meteorology report “The State of the Climate” (2010) states that “Sea surface
temperatures around Australia
have increased by about 0.4oC in the past 50 years… Australian
average temperatures are projected t rise buy 0.6oC to 1.5oC
by 2030. If global greenhouse emissions continue to grow at rates consistent
with past trends, warming is projected to be in the range of 2.2oC
to 5.0oC by 2070… there is a greater than 90% certainty that
increase in greenhouse gas emissions have caused most of the global warming
since the mid-20th century. International research shows that it is extremely
unlikely that the observed warming could be explained by natural causes
alone. Evidence of human influence has been detected in ocean warming, sea
level rise, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind
patterns. CSIRO research has found that higher greenhouse gas levels are likely
to have caused about half of the winter rainfall reduction in south-west Western Australia.”
[23].

24. Phillip Sutton (convenor of the Climate Emergency
Network (CEN) and author with David Spratt of “Climate Code Red. The case for
emergency action”: http://www.scribepublications.com.au/book/climatecodered
) has commented thus on the Queensland flood disaster and man-made global
warming on behalf of CEN: ““The
Climate Emergency Network is calling on the Australian Federal and State
governments to heed the message of the current disastrous Queensland floods and
commit to urgent and effective action to end the plunge into catastrophic
climate change and to restore a safe climate. Failure to do so will lead
to a future of even more extreme floods, droughts and bushfires, occurring more
often. Australia’s
weather has always been highly variable but climate change is exaggerating the
extremes. Hot weather is becoming hotter and dry weather is becoming drier.
More water is taken from the land and sea into the atmosphere, so that when it
does rain, it rains harder. It’s time for Australian politicians, and the
public, to stop ignoring the undeniable evidence and to join the dots. Climate
change is not the sole cause of these events but it is certainly increasing
their devastating effects. For several decades extreme weather events have
become more common and more intense – exactly as climate scientists
predicted. And now across the world communities are suffering not just
extreme but catastrophic weather-driven disasters. And what is really
scary is that this is all happening with a global temperature increase of less
than 1°C. World leaders have agreed to limit climate change to an increase of 2
degrees but have failed to take action that can achieve even that. It is
generally acknowledged that the world is currently on track to an increase of
at least 4 degrees, unless strong action is taken. We are facing a climate
emergency now with a warming of less than 1°C and emergency action needs to be
taken without further delay to cool the earth. To cool the earth we need to
stop adding greenhouse gases to the air and we need to take the excess carbon
dioxide out of the air. Such action will have to be taken urgently, on a
national and global scale.” [24].

25. Professor Matthew England (Climate Change Research
Center, University
of New South Wales, Sydney):
"I think people will end up concluding that at least some of the intensity
of the monsoon in Queensland
can be attributed to climate change. The waters off Australia
are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the
atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia
monsoon.” [25]. (cf. #15).

26. Dr David Jones (head of climate monitoring and prediction, Australia Bureau
of Meteorology, Melbourne): "We've always had El Ninos
and we've had natural variability but the background which is now operating is
different,. The first thing we can say with La Nina and El Nino is it is now
happening in a hotter world…So the El Nino droughts would be expected to be
exacerbated and also La Nina floods because rainfall would be exacerbated [more
evaporation, more atmospheric moisture]." [25].

27. Dr Kevin Trenberth (head, Climate Analysis Section at the National Center
for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA.): “The rapid onset of La Nina
meant the Asian monsoon was enhanced and the over 1 degree Celsius anomalies in
sea surface temperatures led to the flooding in India and China in July and
Pakistan in August…[ about 0.5C of 1.5C above pre-1970 levels attributed to global warming]… The extra water
vapor fuels the monsoon and thus alters the winds and the monsoon itself and so
this likely increases the rainfall further. So it is easy to argue that 1
degree Celsius sea surface temperature anomalies gives 10 to 15 percent
increase in rainfall." [25].

28. Professor Neville Nicholls (Monash
University, Melbourne, president of the Australian Meteorological and
Oceanographic Society): "It's a natural phenomena. We have no strong
reason at the moment for saying this La Nina is any stronger than it would be
even without humans. It [atmospheric warming of about 0.75C over the past half
century] has to be affecting the climate, regionally and globally. It has to be
affecting things like La Nina. But can you find a credible argument which says
it's made it worse? I can't at the moment." [25]. (cf # 12).

29. Dr. Kevin Trenberth (head, Climate Analysis Section, National Center
for Atmospheric Research, Boulder,
Colorado, USA):
I find it systematically tends to get underplayed and it often gets underplayed
by my fellow scientists. Because one of the opening statements, which I’m sure
you’ve probably heard is “Well you can’t attribute a single event to climate
change.” But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events
now-a-days because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking
around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a
4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for
these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with
the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects
are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the
future." [26].

30. Dr Debbie Abbs (climate scientist, CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Melbourne): "Global climate models
simulate rainfall over areas as wide as 200 kilometres. Extreme rainfall over
small areas is much more than that found over large areas where results are
averaged out. This means there is a need to provide extreme rainfall scenarios
at regional scales so projected climate change can be factored into major
infrastructure projects that are being designed to last for decades to come… [high-resolution
model to focus the results from CSIRO's Global climate model down to 7.5
kilometre-wide areas over southern Queensland and northern New South Wales]… "The
most extreme rainfall events we currently experience become more frequent in
2040, with the 1-in-40 year event of today corresponding with a 1-in-15 year
event in future. The areas of greatest increase in intensity occur over
mountainous terrain, inland from Coffs
Harbour, Coolangatta and north of Brisbane… [26% increase
in flooding leads to a 60% increase in damage costs]…. With projected increases
in the intensity and frequency of extreme precipitation events, the community's
exposure to extreme rainfall events is growing rapidly." [27].

31. Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) (2011): “"Recent
scientific advice to the Queensland Government warned that the state would be
threatened by higher flood levels from intense torrential downpours brought on
by climate change. In 2010 the Scientific Advisory Group to the Queensland
Government’s Inland Flooding Study advised that “an increase in rainfall
intensity is likely” and “the available scientific literature indicates this
increased rainfall intensity to be in the range of 3–10 per cent per degree of
global warming”. [28].

32. Professor David Karoly (Melbourne School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne)
(2011): ''Australia has been known for
more than 100 years as a land of droughts and flooding rains, but what climate
change means is Australia becomes a land of more droughts and worse flooding
rains…[ individual events could not be attributed to climate change]…on some measures it's the strongest La Nina in
recorded history … [but] we also have record-high ocean temperatures in
northern Australia which means more moisture evaporating into the air. that
means lots of heavy rain…in Victoria
we had heavy rainfall but the run-off hasn't been as high because after 10
years of drought the ground wasn't as saturated.” [29].

33. Dr David Jones (climate analyst, Bureau of Meteorology (2011) on current
floods (Australia; Brazil 500 dead, 2,700 lost houses; Philippines, 42 dead,
400,000 displaced; Sri Lanka, 23 dead, 325,000 displaced) : "There is definitely
a link between our weather and eastern Brazil's. La Niña sets the atmosphere up
for floods. It doesn't mean you get them, but certainly it makes the floods
more likely, both in eastern Australia and in the north-east of Brazil where we
do see usually above average rainfall during La Niña events…[US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: 2010 was the wettest ever recorded on
the planet]… That tells you the hydrological cycle is very, very active at the
moment. We've seen a lot of evaporation, we've seen a lot of rainfall around
the planet and as best as we can tell, the highest rainfall on record. It was
also the hottest year on record, 2010. At a whole range of different levels
there's certainly drivers which would support this view that the world is
seeing a lot of extreme weather at the moment." [30].

34. Professor Ed Blakely (disaster expert, professor of urban policy, US Studies Centre, Sydney University)
re Queensland floods: “''We shouldn't regard
this [flood] as freakish…should assume they [such disasters] are going to occur
because of climate change. They are becoming increasingly frequent and far more
devastating… [examine need of Queenslanders to] retreat from the coast… It will
take 60-75 years, so we have got to start now. It's very important for us to
see not just this incident but the long-term trend and learn from it and plan
for it. I warned people in Brisbane before hurricane
Katrina that this could happen. I had all the CSIRO data that showed a flood
that looked very much like the flood that happened. They scoffed.'' [31].

35. Dr Andrew Glikson (former Principal Research Scientist, Australian Geological Survey Organization, Earth and paleoclimate scientist. School of
Archaeology and Anthropology, Research School of Earth Science, Planetary
Science Institute, Australian National University) on Queensland floods [noting
according to the report, thatclimate
scientists were careful never to point to a single event as evidence of climate
change but to examine medium and long-term trends] : “'Cyclones have increased twofold over the past 20 years.
Floods have increased threefold. It's happening now, and it's happening faster
than some of the climate-change scientists have dared to predict” [31].

36. William Cosgrove (vice president, World Water Council),
3rd World Water Forum, 2003: "Extreme weather records are [already] being
broken every year and the resulting hydro-meteorological disasters claim
thousands of lives and disrupt national economies," said of the
Marseille-based think tank made up of users and suppliers of water for social
and economic development. The big problem is that most countries aren't ready
to deal adequately with the severe natural disasters that we get now, a
situation that will become much worse as storms and droughts become more
pervasive. Ignoring the problem is no longer an option… The increasing incidence
of extreme events provides a convincing argument to continue looking into
building partnerships between science, water managers and the disaster
preparedness communities, including the development and dissemination of
capacity development packages and methodologies. It is telling that disaster
reduction has been recognized since 2000 an issue central to poverty reduction.
” [32, 33].

37. World Water Council press release from the 3rd World Water
Forum re climate change, droughts and floods (February 2003): “Economic loses
from weather and flood catastrophes have increased ten-fold over the past 50
years, partially the result of rapid climate changes, the World Water Council
(WWC) says. These rapid climate changes are seen in more intense rainy seasons,
longer dry seasons, stronger storms, shifts in rainfall and rising sea levels,.
More disastrous floods and droughts have been the most visible manifestations of
these changes. From 1971 to 1995, floods affected more than 1.5 billion people worldwide,
or 100 million people per year, according to experts. This total includes
318,000 killed, and more than 81 million left homeless. Major floods that left
at least 1,000 people dead and caused $1 billion in damages per episode have
been the most destructive… According to climate experts, the expected climatic change
during the 21st century will further intensify the hydrological cycle – with rainy
seasons becoming shorter and more intense in some regions, while droughts in
other areas will grow longer in duration, which could endanger species and
crops and lead to drops in food production globally. Evidence for the link
between climate change and increasing climate variability is mounting rapidly. For
example, scientific research has linked the recent droughts in the USA and Afghanistan to the effects of
global warming… These climate disasters stemming from climate variability include:
Floods [and Droughts] - Based on data
for ther period 1950 to 1998, the number of major flood disasters has grown
considerably world-wide from decade to decade – six cases in the 1950s, seven
in the 1960s, eight in the 1970s, 18 in the 1980s, and 26 in the 1990s. The
number of significant flood disasters in the 1990s was higher than in the three
previous decades combined. Overall, global precipitation is estimated to have
increased by about two percent since 1900, though not on a uniform basis. This
disparity in new rainfall caused some places to become wetter and othersto get drier, such as North Africa south of
the Sahara. In the most calamitous storm
surge, the flood in Bangladesh
in April 1991 killed 141,000 people. Two floods in China, one in 1996 and the second
in 1998, caused the highest material losses of the decade, of the order of $30
billion and $26.5 billion, respectively. Floods also destroy the hard-won
economic advances that many in the the deveklo0jg world have accomplished, such
as the Mozambique floods of 2000, which left nearly 1 million homeless, and Hurricane
Mitch in Central America [1998]. Comparing the economic impacts of the 2000
flood in Mozambique with the
2002 flood in Central Europe clearly illustrates
the disparity in how national economies are impacted by extreme events. The cost
of damages reflects the income levels of the countries. According to officials
at the World Bank, the Mozambique flood resulted in a 45 percent drop in GDP in
2000, whereas in Germany, the 2002 flood is estimated to have caused less than
a one percent drop in GDP…Hurricane Mitch [1998] killed 11,000 people, with
thousands of others missing. More than 3 million people were either homeless or
severely affected. In this extremely poor regions, estimates of the total damage
from the storm surpassed $5 billion. The President of Honduras, Carlos Flores
Facusse, claimed the storm destroyed 50 years of progress. As far as the
geographic distribution odf the worst floods, the majority occurred in Asian
countries … In addition, the impact of floods has had increasingly detrimental
and disruptive effects on human health. In flooded areas, some diseases such as
diarrhea, which kills 2.2 million children under th4 age of five per year, or
leptospirosis (a systemic infection that can lead to meningitis and hemorrhagic
jaundice) spread more rapidly… Many countries in Africa
have been suffering from unprecedented droughts that may signal widespread
climate change … Sea level rise is a concern in coastal and low-lying areas,
including small islands. In addition to coastal flooding, saltwater intrusion
into freshwater aquifers present a threat to water supplies. The average global
sea level rise from 1900 to the year 2100 is expected to be 0.48 meters (19 inches),
between twice and four times the rate of rise over the 20th century. The main
effect on humans will be to confront extreme events such as storm surges. Areas
of greatest danger include Small islands in the Pacific, mainly the Atolls;
Coastal low-lying countries like Bangladesh
and the Netherlands; Coastal
mega-cities like Tokyo, Lagos,
Beuenos Aires and New York.”
[32, 33].

38. Hideaki Oda (director of the secretariat of the 3rd World
Water Forum) (2003): “Devastating floods seem to be getting worse. In 2002,
many floods ravaged part so ft he world, especially in Asia and Europe. More than 4,200 people in the world died as a
result of flooding, and more than 16 million people have been affected by
floods in that year .” [32, 33].

39. Greens leader and Senator Dr Bob Brown in demanding that the Federal Government should impose the original
version of the Resources Super Profits Tax, and use the funds to pay for the floods
clean-up: “It's the single biggest cause - burning coal - for climate change
and it must take its major share of responsibility for the weather events we
are seeing unfolding now. We know that the oceans around Australia are
at record high temperatures, and that's causing the moisture in the air which
is leading to these catastrophic floods. It is costing billions of dollars,
besides the pain, the anguish, the loss of life, the destruction and it should
not be left to ordinary taxpayers to bear the full brunt of that." [34].

40. The Age, Melbourne (arguably the most
progressive of Australia’s
mainstream media), in an Editorial on man-made climate change and the
Queensland and Eastern Australia flood disaster (2011): “Calls
have begun for the Queensland government to
conduct a royal commission into the floods, similar in scope to
Victoria's Bushfires
Royal Commission. The Victorian inquiry examined the circumstances of
the 2009
Black Saturday bushfires, including the impact of climate change.
Climate
scientists were disappointed its report did not sufficiently emphasise
the
unique weather contributing to the disaster. Victoria had never had
three consecutive
days above 42 degrees until January 2009, when there were three above 43
degrees. The heatwave is believed to be responsible for 500 deaths in
Victoria, South Australia
and Tasmania,
but was largely forgotten after the tragic fires… Australian weather is
believed to be particularly sensitive to climate change. Like Victoria's
fires, floods are part of a
natural cycle. La Nina, the periodic oceanic cooling phenomenon, is far
more
directly to blame for the weather Australia is now experiencing. But
it would be shortsighted not to take into account the role of global
warming in
these catastrophes. Professor David Karoly, from Melbourne
University's School of Earth Sciences,
says while individual events cannot be attributed to climate change, the
extreme weather patterns are in line with scientific predictions that a
warmer
world will mean more severe droughts, more fires and flooding rains… So
far,
our political leaders have postponed making difficult decisions about
the need
to tackle climate change - such as setting a carbon price - because of
fears
they will be punished by a sceptical electorate. A great effort is
required,
with no immediate return guaranteed. More investment and better planning
are
necessary (in public transport, in alternative forms of energy and to
compensate low-income earners when energy prices rise) to take into
account the
effects of drought, floods and rising sea levels. The band of
environmentally
aware voters is growing; the major parties can make gains by tackling
their
legitimate concerns.” [35].

41. Professor Will Steffen (a member of the climate change and carbon
pricing committee set up by the Gillard government in September 2010 and who is
working on a report about the floods) stated: “"We are getting more
intense rainfall events as the earth warms, but it's difficult to pin down any
individual event. Rainfall events like the type we've seen in Queensland are becoming more likely as the
earth warms. There is a long-term warming trend with or without La Nina…We've
now got a problem on our hands [re increasing burning of fossil fuels]."
[36]

42. Chris Cocklin (environmental scientist, James
Cook University,
Townsville, Queensland) re La Nina. Climate change and
the Queensland
floods (2011): “You've got to be very careful about saying that ... the
intensity of La Nina ... is a product of climate change. But more intense
weather patterns is certainly one of the strong predictions of climate science.
If you look at one of the significant predictions throughout many parts of Australia
- it's that rainfall will become more intensified. So all of that will add up
to patterns that we have got to get used to." [37].

43. Clem Davis ( former weather bureau meteorologist, visiting fellow
at Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian
National University)
re la Nina, Queensland
floods and climate change (2011): “It's the strongest La Nina episode since
1974, when Brisbane
flooded the last time. It is probably within the top five events over ... 130
years of records. You've got natural variability and you've got what global
warming may be impacting… The records aren't long enough [in Australia back to 1876] , so it's
hard to see which is impacting on the other. [That's why] researchers are
looking at paleoclimate records to see what the cycles may have been in the
past." [37].

44. Long Cao, Govindasamy Bala, Ken Caldeira, Ramakrishna Nemani, and George Ban-Weiss on
the importance of carbon dioxide physiological forcing to future climate change
(at doubled CO2 a total 15% increase in precipitation run-off due to increased precipitation
due to increased CO2 plus reduced
transpiration from decreased plant leaf stomatal aperture) (2010): “An
increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration
influences climate both directly through its radiative effect (i.e., trapping
longwave radiation) and indirectly through its physiological effect (i.e.,
reducing transpiration of land plants). Here we compare the climate response to
radiative and physiological effects of increased CO2 using the
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) coupled Community Land and
Community Atmosphere Model. In response to a doubling of CO2, the
radiative effect of CO2 causes mean surface air temperature over
land to increase by 2.86 ± 0.02 K (± 1 standard error),
whereas the physiological effects of CO2 on land plants alone causes
air temperature over land to increase by 0.42 ± 0.02 K.
Combined, these two effects cause a land surface warming of
3.33 ± 0.03 K. The radiative effect of doubling CO2
increases global runoff by 5.2 ± 0.6%, primarily by increasing
precipitation over the continents. The physiological effect increases runoff by
8.4 ± 0.6%, primarily by diminishing evapotranspiration from the
continents. Combined, these two effects cause a 14.9 ± 0.7% increase
in runoff. Relative humidity remains roughly constant in response to CO2-radiative
forcing, whereas relative humidity over land decreases in response to CO2-physiological
forcing as a result of reduced plant transpiration. Our study points to an
emerging consensus that the physiological effects of increasing atmospheric CO2
on land plants will increase global warming beyond that caused by the radiative
effects of CO2.” [38].

45. Dr
Richard Betts (the Met Office, UK; he and his colleagues have modelled the
effect of plants opening leaf stomata
less widely when CO2 is high, losing less water and hence causing increased
run-off): "It's a double-edged
sword; it means that increases in drought due to climate change could be less
severe as plants lose less water. On the other hand, if the land is saturated
more often, you might expect that intense rainfall events are more likely to
cause flooding." [39].

46. Richard A. Betts, Olivier
Boucher, Matthew Collins, Peter M. Cox, Peter D. Falloon, Nicola Gedney,
Deborah L. Hemming, Chris Huntingford, Chris D. Jones, David M. H. Sexton &
Mark J. Webb (Met Office Hadley Centre and other institutions) on projected
increase in continental runoff due to plant responses to increasing carbon
dioxide (2007): “In addition to influencing climatic conditions directly
through radiative forcing, increasing carbon dioxide concentration influences
the climate system through its effects on plant physiology1.
Plant stomata generally open less widely under increased carbon dioxide
concentration2,
which reduces transpiration and thus leaves more water at the land surface7.
This driver of change in the climate system, which we term 'physiological
forcing', has been detected in observational records of increasing average
continental runoff over the twentieth century8.
Here we use an ensemble of experiments with a global climate model that
includes a vegetation component to assess the contribution of physiological
forcing to future changes in continental runoff, in the context of
uncertainties in future precipitation. We find that the physiological effect of
doubled carbon dioxide concentrations on plant transpiration increases simulated
global mean runoff by 6 per cent relative to pre-industrial levels; an increase
that is comparable to that simulated in response to radiatively forced climate
change (11 6 per cent). Assessments
of the effect of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations on the hydrological
cycle that only consider radiative forcing will therefore tend to underestimate
future increases in runoff and overestimate decreases. This suggests that
freshwater resources may be less limited than previously assumed under
scenarios of future global warming, although there is still an increased risk
of drought. Moreover, our results highlight that the practice of assessing the
climate-forcing potential of all greenhouse gases in terms of their radiative
forcing potential relative to carbon dioxide does not accurately reflect the
relative effects of different greenhouse gases on freshwater resources.” [40].

47. IPCC
(2001): “The most widespread direct risk to human settlements from
climate change is flooding and landslides, driven by projected increases in
rainfall intensity and, in coastal areas, sea-level rise. Riverine and coastal
settlements are particularly at risk (high confidence6), but urban flooding could be a
problem anywhere that storm drains, water supply, and waste management systems
have inadequate capacity. In such areas, squatter and other informal urban
settlements with high population density, poor shelter, little or no access to
resources such as safe water and public health services, and low adaptive
capacity are highly vulnerable. Human settlements currently experience other
significant environmental problems which could be exacerbated under higher
temperature/increased precipitation regimes, including water and energy
resources and infrastructure, waste treatment, and transportation.” [41].

48. Global Greenhouse Warming.com on climate and floods: "Meteorologic
floods are by far the most common of the types of floods in the human
experience, affecting parts of the globe every year. Such floods can bring
good, such as the fertile soils formerly brought to the Nile Delta by annual
flooding. However, large floods are mostly known for their catastrophic loss of
life and property, such as in China and Bangladesh which repeatedly devastated
by floods - Bangladesh lost 300,000 people in November 1970 and more than
130,000 in April 1991, from cyclone-induced flooding, and the massive flooding
of the Yangtze River in China in 1931 caused more than 3 million deaths with a
further 2 million in 1959 from flooding and starvation. …By 2025, half the
world's population will be living in areas that are at risk from storms and
other weather extremes," the World Water Council said, citing evidence
gathered by U.N. and other experts. The economic cost of changes in climate and
floods will be huge, especially for poor countries that are likely to bear the
brunt of these events. The phrase Climate and Floods is something we will hear
more of in the years ahead.”[42].

49. Dr James Hansen (top US climate scientist; Director,
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; member of the prestigiousUS
National Academy of Sciences; 2007 Award
for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the prestigious American
Association for the Advancement of Science; adjunct professor,
75-Nobel-Laureate Columbia University) on climate change and extreme
floods in “Storms
of My Grandchildren” (2009): “A warming atmosphere causes greater
desiccation,
but at other times and places it can deliver heavier rain and cause
larger
floods… Increased warming’s greatest impact on storms will occur through
its
influence on atmospheric water vapor. The amount of water vapor that the air can hold is a strong
function of temperature. The
fact that atmospheric water vapor increases rapidly with only a small temperature
rise is the basis for the runaway greenhouse effect. But the storms of our
grandchildren will begin long before the planet approaches the runaway
greenhouse effect… Latent heat is the energy that water vapor acquires when it
evaporates from the liquid state or sublimates from ice. To evaporate water
requires a lot of energy – more than 500 calories per gram of water at normal
atmospheric pressure – which is needed to break the strong forces of attraction
[hydrogen bonds] between water molecules When the water vapor condenses, that latent energy
is released as heat that is potentially available to fuel a storm … Because a
warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor and thus has greater latent heat, the strength
of the strongest storms will increase as
global warming increases. The greater moisture content of the air also
increases the amount of rainfall and the magnitude of floods. Already, as we’ve
seen, many places around the world have
experienced an unnatural increase of “hundred-year” floods, which are occurring
more often than their names would imply. In some places the effect of increased
rainfall amounts is exacerbated by deforestation or other human activities that
reduce the ability of the surface to retain water.” [43].

50. Julian
C. R. Hunt Department of Earth Sciences, UCL, UK) , Mark Maslin (Environment
Institute, UCL, UK), Peter Backlund (National Centre for Atmospheric Research,
Boulder, Colorado, USA), Tim Killeen (National Centre for Atmospheric Research,
Boulder, Colorado, USA) and H. John Schellnhuber (Potsdam Institute for Klimatology,
Potsdam, Germany) on urban threat from and contribution to extreme weather events
(2007): “In 2005, 50% of the world’s population lived in cities consuming over
75% of the world’s energy use; as human development (as measured by the UN
index) energy use will increase faster than the increase in population. By 2030,
it is predicted that over 60% of the world’s population will live in cities
with this percentage continuing to rise to the end of the century. Urban areas
are particularly vulnerable to the effects of global; warming, particularly extreme
weather events such as floods, storm surges, drought and heat waves (Stern et
al. 2006; IPCC 2007), For example, it is
estimated that the 2003 heat wave in Europe
killed as many as 35,000 people. With modern urban lifestyles citi4s are
consuming ever more power, which is still largely generated by fossil fuel combustion;
the main uses are heating or air conditioning homes and buildings and powering
vehicles, with industry in cities now taking a relatively small proportion. In
fact cities discharge an amount of heat comparable to that received from solar
radiation. Inevitably they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions from fossil
fuel combustion and also from waste disposal management practices. As rapidly growing
cities are clearing forests and vegetated areas, they are reducing the surface absorption
of greenhouse gases and thereby further increasing their concentration in the
atmosphere. Therefore, cities have special
responsibilities both to their own citizens and to everyone else to mitigate future
climate change, at the same time helping their communities to adapt to the
growing seriousness of the consequences for people’s heath and welfare. Since
the planning of such policies is complex as well as politically difficult, decision
makers responsible for the future of cities require the best expert knowledge
available. Hence the importance and timeliness of the papers in this special issue,
which are a selection from those presented at a conference held at University
College London [UCL] in April 2006.” [44].

51. Professor David de Kretser
(Governor of Victoria, Australia, and eminent IVF scientist) interviewed about the
devastating Victorian floods coming 2 years after the January 2009 heat wave
that killed 374 Victorians and the 7 February 2009 Black Saturday bushfires
that killed 173 Victorians): "I'm sorry, I'm one of these believers
in climate change I'm afraid and if its doesn't get that message out I don't
think its going to go away. There's too many of these events, not only in
Australia but throughout the whole world that are happening now, which everyone
says this week (is a) one in 100, one in 200 years (event) but they are
happening pretty much more frequently now.'' [45, 46].

52. Elizabeth Farrelly (Sydney Morning Herald columnist, author and
architect) re responses to the Queensland
floods (2011): "To blame Bob Brown [for blaming man-made global warming
for extreme floods] is to shoot the messenger. As we ache for Queensland's losses and rightly look to
recovery, we must also heed the cataclysm's larger lesson... Global energy
demand is about 13 terawatts (a terawatt is a trillion watts; a watt is a joule
per second). Eighty per cent of this is fossil-derived. For civilisation to
survive, a California Institute of Technology chemist, Nathan Lewis,
calculates, 90 per cent must be carbon-free by 2050. To do it with nuclear
power would mean building a reactor every two days for the next four decades.
Yet if we don't do it, melting ice caps will be the least of our worries. Melting
the permafrost, with its vast reserves of carbon dioxide and methane, will turn
global warming, and its weather extremes, exponential...The sun pours 120,000
terawatts of energy onto Earth; 10,000 times what we need. With solar
technology only 10 per cent efficient, calculates Lewis (and efficiencies now
are often 15 per cent or higher), the entire energy needs of the US could be
generated from a 400-kilometre square of Earth's crust...Melbourne University's
Zero Carbon Australia plan insists that, using only wind, solar, biomass and
hydro, we could be carbon-free by 2020. Crazy not to try. Don't blame Bob
Brown. This is Gaia's lesson. Children, learn your cataclysm!" [47].

53. Adam Bandt (Australian Federal Greens MP) has backed yesterday's comments
from the Victorian Governor (see #51) on the relationship between climate change
and flooding and has said Premier Baillieu is being irresponsible in denying
the link: "The immediate task is to ensure the safety and welfare of
Victorians affected by the floods. But this should not prevent us from having a
discussion about the impact of climate change and the likelihood of these
extreme events recurring, Scientists have been warning for some time that
global warming would lead to more extreme weather events including more intense
and widespread flooding. Increased ocean temperatures lead to more moisture in
the atmosphere and more energy in the storms. This is basic physics."All
the Governor was doing was pointing out the facts. If we don't want more of
these disasters to become regular events, we have to take urgent action to
combat climate change. Here in Melbourne
there are reports of advice to Melbourne Water that we face an increased in
area of flooding of up to 25% because of climate change.Ted Baillieu is being
irresponsible in denying the link between climate change and extreme weather. And
the Premier's assertion that engineers managed to set levees at the appropriate
height have been proven to be untrue on the Loddon River.If he doesn't
understand the climate problem he needs to get properly briefed because we will
be facing this for a long time to come. He also needs to tell Victorians what
he is going to do to both cut Victoria's
carbon pollution and prepare for rising sea levels and more extreme weather
including bushfires and heatwaves as well as floods." [48].

54. Ewan Saunders, Socialist Alliance Queensland co-convenor, January 4. “The
latest flood crisis in Queensland underlines the urgent need for
serious action on climate change. This flood disaster is the greatest
for decades, now covering an area bigger than all of NSW, and affecting
more than 200,000 people. The repair bill will amount to billions of
dollars. Worse still is the suffering of the people of this state, and
the loss of irreplaceable belongings, heritage and livelihoods.While
floods are periodic natural occurrences here and throughout Australia,
the size and severity of this flood exceeds any on record in recent
times. Why? There is ample evidence that the wild swings in weather we
have experienced in Australia lately are linked to worldwide,
human-caused climate change. How can it be an accident of nature that
Queensland's most devastating floods closely follow on the worst bush
fires in Victorian history near Melbourne in February 2009. Yet, the
elephant in the room -- climate change -- is rarely mentioned in
official reports of these events. The recent findings of the Royal
Commission into the Victorian bush fires failed to mention climate
change as a factor in the disaster, which cost nearly 200 lives. Climate
change is causing a noticeable rise in overall ocean temperatures and
levels. This will undoubtedly contribute to even worse flood disasters
in future, in Australia and elsewhere. Far from being sheltered from the
worst effects of climate change, Australia will be one of the countries
most seriously hit -- by both fire and flood. Our governments need to
heed the message, and take radical action to tackle climate change -- by
rapidly phasing out reliance on coal, and urgently changing to
renewable sources of energy, such as solar, wind and geothermal.
Moreover, federal and state governments need to urgently expand and
co-ordinate national emergency action to combat fire and flood by
creating a National Emergency Rapid Response Council, combining
firefighting, SES, medical, police and military forces, under the
control of expert officials elected by workers and volunteers in the
various fields. In this way, the vast good will and energies of the
dedicated people who staff our disaster relief agencies can be best
mobilised to confront this growing threat to our society.” [49].

55. Don Henry,
executive director, Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF): “It’s
right for the government to help people rebuild after these devastating
floods, but it should use fossil fuel subsidies [circa $10 billion pa]
to fund the work. There are a number of tax breaks and concessions that
drain the Federal Budget, while promoting fossil fuel use and greenhouse
pollution. The largest of these fossil fuel subsidies is the Fuel Tax
Credits program, which costs taxpayers more than $5 billion a year, the
vast majority of which goes to mining companies as credits for use of
diesel fuel. Another is the Fringe Benefits Tax concession for personal
use of company cars, which is set up so that if you drive a company car,
the benefits increase the more you drive it and the more you pollute
the atmosphere. US President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union
address this week, made a commitment to fund the development of clean
technology by ending $4 billion a year of tax subsidies to oil, gas and
other fossil fuel producers. Australia should take a leaf out of Obama’s
book. While no single extreme weather event can be directly attributed
to climate change, this summer’s floods are entirely consistent with
what climate scientists have been warning for decades. By cutting
greenhouse pollution we can reduce the severity of extreme weather
events and help protect our people and our economy.” [50].

56. Greens leader and senator Dr Bob Brown: "coal barons [should be made to pay]… Burning
coal is a major cause of global warming. This industry, which is 75 per
cent owned outside Australia, should help pay the cost of the predicted
more severe and more frequent floods, droughts and bushfires in coming
decades. It is unfair that the cost is put on all taxpayers, not the
culprits.” [51].

57. Greens leader and senator Dr Bob Brown:
“After the hottest and wettest year in recorded history, the seas off
northern Australia are also currently warmer than ever before. This
heat has led to increased evaporation and so, rainfall. Sceptics and
defenders of the coal industry may dispute this scientific data, but
they don’t. Instead, they are arguing that there should be no debate –
not, at least, until some undefined time in the future when the
cataclysm has passed and its injuries are behind us. A week after the
“inland tsunami” struck the Toowoomba region, with the flood crest
having passed in Brisbane, and Rockhampton beginning to recover,
Australia’s newspapers are now carrying letters expressing frustration
at the absence of debate on the causes of the floods across the nation
and, indeed, in Brazil, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Like the drought,
heatwaves and bushfires, these floods are predictable calamities and
worse is in store as the planet is heated by human actions. We may
collectively choose to do nothing about the rapidly increasing of
burning of coal, here and overseas, from coal being mined in Australia
by wealthy corporations largely owned overseas. However, that choice
should not be made without informed debate. If there is a later time
better for this crucial debate to begin, let the critics name it.” [52].

58. Dr Gideon Polya re floods levy: “Because
of weather variability one cannot attribute a specific flood event to
man-made global warming. However global warming has been associated with
a 4- to 10-fold increase in floods since the 1950s. The floods will
cost more than Gillard's measly $1.8 billion but pro-oil, pro-gas,
pro-coal, pro-war, pro-Big Business Gillard won't make the greenhouse
gas polluters pay for the disasters they are causing to ordinary
Australians. It will only get worse (Google man-made climate change and
floods)… [submitted] We should all contribute our fair share but since
income directly relates to carbon pollution and hence impact on flood
disasters, the rich should pay more. Further, as stated by the Greens,
we need a disaster fund in the face of worsening climate change; stop
wasting money on the Afghan War (Afghan Genocide); and tax the largely
foreign-owned coal, gas and oil companies who have disproportionately
contributed to the floods disaster through greenhouse gas pollution and
consequent global warming.” [53].

59. Dr Gideon Polya
re Neil Mitchell interview with PM Gillard over levy: “A good, strong,
polite interview by Neil Mitchell that could indeed have been stronger.
Thus if we are looking for savings, pro-war PM Gillard spends about $1
billion annually on the unwinnable war in Afghanistan that is associated
with 280,000 avoidable under-5 year old Afghan infant deaths annually
(2.3 million since 2001) and 350 avoidable Australian opiate
drug-related deaths annually due to US Alliance restoration of the
Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry (3,000 such Australian deaths
since 2001). Value for money?... Some good ideas on how to pay for
floods reconstruction: Ewan Saunders (Socialist Alliance) says stop
wasting billions on the Afghan War and bring soldiers home to help with
reconstruction; Don Henry (ACF) says abolish the circa $10 billion pa infossil
fuel subsidies; Senator Bob Brown (Greens)says tax the largely foreign
owned coal companies who have contributed to the floodsvia
global warming; and Senator Christine Milne (Greens) advocates a
disaster relief fund to deal with disasters in the face of climate
change.” [54].

60. Gideon Polya: “Greens
leader Bob Brown is essentially correct in alleging coal industry
complicity in current flood disasters. We know that breathing in
pollutants from the burning of coal, gas, oil and cigarettes is
associated with lung disease (carbon fuel pollutants and smoking kill
about 13,000 and 18,000 Australians, respectively, each year) but we
cannot prove that a specific case of lung cancer is due to any of these
causes. Similarly, while human-made global warming has been associated
with a huge increase in extreme flood events throughout the world,
because the weather is variable one cannot attribute a particular event
such as the La Nina-linked Queensland floods to climate change. However,
the scientific message is that to minimise both deadly lung disease and
extreme weather events such as the disastrous current floods we must
stop burning coal, gas and oil and remove the resultant atmospheric
pollution. Top climate scientists instruct that atmospheric CO2 must be
urgently reduced to about 300 parts per million from the current
dangerous 392 ppm for a safe planet for all people and all species.” [55].

61. Greens acting leader, Senator Christine Milne:
“Helping to rebuild shattered communities left in the wake of these
devastating floods is a top priority for Australians and the Greens
firmly stand behind that goal. But it does a disservice to all those
tragically affected by these floods - and all those whose lives will be
thrown into turmoil by more floods, fires, storms and droughts in years
to come - to keep insisting that these are one off events and ignore the
role of climate change. It beggars belief that the government would
choose to cut climate change programs like Solar Flagships, energy
efficiency and the solar hot water rebate to fund disaster relief when
such disasters will be made worse by climate change. We must recognise
that less than 1C of global warming is making these human, economic and
environmental disasters a part of life this century. We need to start
planning now for the reality of climate change and redouble our efforts
to return to a safe climate, not cut back on that effort. Contrary to
speculation this morning by Saul Eslake, the Greens have had no
discussions with the government about the proposed flood levy as yet,
but we will be seeking to start those discussions as soon as possible.
The Greens have proposed deferring the top end corporate tax cuts
planned for July 1 2013, while keeping the cuts for small business. This
would net the government around $1.7 billion in the forward estimates,
protect low income earners and small businesses and enable the
government to reverse its decision to cut critical climate programs.
While we are open to the idea of a levy, the Greens see establishing a
long-term, well-resourced disaster relief fund as a high priority in the
face of climate change. Rebuilding in the wake of a climate-related
disaster presents an opportunity to make sure new infrastructure is
built with climate change in mind. This means building in resilience to
worse disasters to come by reviewing planning laws and building
standards as well as focussing on high efficiency, low emissions options
like public transport and renewable energy infrastructure. Public funds
from this levy or elsewhere should not be spent on more coal
infrastructure that will only make the situation worse for all of us.
The Greens' final position on the levy will be considered by the party
room.” [56].

62. Bob Carr (former Labor premier of New South Wales, Australia): “My
sympathies are extended to all the Australian families affected by
these savage floods. But I want to push the debate on climate change
because most of the sources I’ve consulted over the years have discussed
more serious flooding as one of the accompaniments of global warming… But
savage floods are absolutely consistent with all that has been
speculated about and predicted in the context of “mankind’s craziest
experiment” of global warming.” [57].

63. Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org) in the Preface to his book “Eaarth” (2010): “Much
more quickly than we would have guessed in the late 1980s, global
warming has dramatically altered, among many other things, hydrological
cycles. One of the key facts of the twenty-first century turns out to be
that warm air holds more water vapour than cold: in arid areas this
means increased evaporation and hence drought. And once that water is in
the atmosphere, it will come down, which in moist areas like Vermont
means increased deluge and flood… [re increased precipitation] Not
gentle rain but damaging gully washers: across the planet, flood damage
is increasing by five pecent a year. Data show dramatic increases – 20
percent or more – on the most extreme weather events across the eastern
United States, the kind of storms that drop many inches of rain in a
single day. Vermont saw three flood emergencies in the 1960s, two in the
1970s, three in the 1980s – and ten in the 1990s and ten so far in the
first decade of the new century.” [57, 58].

64. CSIRO
on man-made climate change and rainfall in Australia (2007): “The
global climate has warmed by one degree on average since 1950. This
trend is mirrored over all of Australia with the
exception of the northwest corner. The global climate models find that
this trend cannot be accounted for by natural variation. The globaltemperature
trend is overwhelmingly attributed to greenhouse gases … [re SW
Australian rainfall] Attribution studies of the changes suggest that
natural variability, along with anthropogenic climate change caused by
the Asian haze, are dominant causes with a possible contribution from
land clearing as well. There is thus a signal that we are already seeing
the consequences of anthropogenic climate change
not just climate variability. A similar picture is beginning to emerge
fro the rest of southern Australia as well… There is early evidence that
the relationship between the SOI [Southern OscillationIndex]
and Australian climate is changing. The tropical Pacific Ocean has
warmed to historically unprecedented levels, and the SOI has dropped to
unprecedented levels. There is some evidence that the amplitudes of
rainfall variations have increased as a consequence… A feature of
Australian hydrology is that it is more highly variable from year to
year than on any other continent. The difference between a one year
flood and a one in a hundred years flood is larger than anywhere else.”
[59].

65. Dr James Hansen
in “Storms of My Grandchildren” (2010): “Global warming does increase
the intensity of droughts and heat waves, and thus the area of forest
fires. However, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour,
global warming must also increase the intensity of the other extreme of
the hydrological cycle – meaning heavier rains, more extreme floods, and
more intense storms driven by latent heat, including thunderstorms,
tornadoes, and tropical storms. I realized that I should have emphasized
more strongly [in his 1988 testimony to a US Senate Committee] that
both extremes increase with global warming.” [60].

67. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),
2006 (founded in 1848, AAAS serves some 262 affiliated societies and
academies of science, serving 10 million individuals; the AAAS journal
Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general
science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of 1
million): “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change
caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat
to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array
of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice
sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in
species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm
have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control
greenhouse gas emissions is now… In addition to rapidly reducing
greenhouse gas emissions, it is essential that we develop strategies to
adapt to ongoing changes and make communities more resilient to future
changes. The growing torrent of information presents a clear message: we
are already experiencing global climate change. It is time to muster
the political will for concerted action. Stronger leadership at all
levels is needed. The time is now. We must rise to the challenge. We owe
this to future generations.” [62].

68. Omar Baddour ( chief of climate data management applications at the Geneva headquarters of the
U.N. World Meteorological Organization, WMO) on extreme floods and
drought: "We will always have climate extremes. But it looks like
climate change is exacerbating the intensity of the extremes. It is too
early to point to a human fingerprint" behind individual weather
events.” [63].

69. Professor Andrew Watson
(a climatologist at the University of East Anglia, UK): “[extreme
events are] fairly consistent with the IPCC reports and what 99 per cent
of the scientists believe to be happening. I'm quite sure that the
increased frequency of these kind of summers over the last few decades
is linked to climate change." [64].

70. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (vice-president
of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC) on Pakistan
floods: “These are events which reproduce and intensify in a climate
disturbed by greenhouse gas pollution. Extreme events are one of the
ways in which climatic changes become dramatically visible.” [64].

71. Dr Peter Stott (head
of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office) re Pakistan
floods (saying it was impossible to attribute any one of these
particular weather events to global warming alone): “ The odds of such
extreme events are rapidly shortening and could become considered the
norm by the middle of this century," [64].

72. Ghassem Asrar
(director of the World Climate Research Programme and the WMO) on
Pakistan floods: “There's no doubt that clearly the climate change is
contributing, a major contributing factor… [re China mudslides, Russian
fires, Pakistan floods] The connecting factor is that clearly the
warming is a driver for all these events.” [65].

73. World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
re China mudslides, Russian fires, Pakistan floods: “The occurrence of
all these events at almost the same time raises questions about their
possible linkages to the predicted increase in intensity and frequency
of extreme events, for example as stipulated in the IPCC's Fourth
Assessment Report published in 2007.” [65].

74. Professor Peter Grace (Global Change, Queensland University of Technology (QUT))
says greenhouse gases and global warning are contributing factors to extreme
floods: "We will have an increased frequency of quite major events similar
to what we had, particularly the flooding event in south-east Queensland. It
means a bipartisan approach to climate change. Without that we are not going to
go much further in terms of preparing ourselves for climate change in the
future." [66].

75. Experts from the
German Weather Service (DWD), the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the Federal
Agency for Technical Relief (THW) and the Federal Office of Civil Protection and
Disaster Assistance (BBK) called a joint press conference in Berlin on
Tuesday 15 February 2011 to highlight the dangers climate change could pose to
Germany and warned that, already living in a damp climate, Germans should
expect a lot more precipitation (reported by The Local, Germany’s news in
English. [67]

76. Paul Becker (vice president of the German
Weather Service, DWD) at a joint news conference of experts from the German
Weather Service (DWD), the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the Federal Agency
for Technical Relief (THW) and the Federal Office of Civil Protection and
Disaster Assistance (BBK) (2011): “Particularly in coastal areas, the amount of
(heavy rainfall and flooding) could double compared to the period between 1960
and 2000. By the year 2100 we expect torrential rains in winter, that is in the
months of December, January, and February, across much of Germany (the DWD
defined heavy precipitation as a downpour of up to 100 litres of rain per
square metre in 24 hours).” [67].

77. Jochen Flasbarth (head of the German
Federal Environment Agency, UBA), at a joint news conference of experts
from the German Weather Service (DWD), the Federal Environment Agency (UBA),
the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) and the Federal Office of Civil
Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) (2011), underscored the threat to
Germany's infrastructure including water supplies, energy and transportation from
extreme weather: “These findings increase pressure to do something to
counteract the unavoidable impact from climate change. Protecting our climate
should be priority number one.” [67].

78. Christoph Unger (president of the Federal
Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance, BBK), at a joint news
conference of experts from the German Weather Service (DWD), the Federal
Environment Agency (UBA), the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) and the
Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) (2011) said that
due to Germany's demographic decline, fewer volunteers would be available to
cope in the event of a extreme weather natural disasters: "If we want to
keep our current high level of civil protection measures in Germany, we'll have
to spot changing threats and react beforehand.” [67].

79. Volker Strotmann (German
Federal Agency for Technical Relief, THW),
at a joint news conference of experts from the German Weather Service (DWD),
the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), the Federal Agency for Technical Relief
(THW) and the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK)
(2011) is quoted as saying that German disaster
relief agencies were already seeing a surge in incidents related to the
changing weather and that the THW put in
twice as many man hours in 2010 compared to 2009. [67].

80. Dr Michael Oppenheimer (climate-policy researcher, Princeton University, New Jersey, US) (commenting on findings published
in Nature that climate warming is already causing extreme weather events that
affect the lives of millions and that rising greenhouse-gas levels with the growing
intensity of rain and snow in the Northern Hemisphere, and the increased risk
of flooding in the United Kingdom) (2011): “This [finding of climate change link
to extreme weather] has immense importance not just as a further justification
for emissions reduction, but also for adaptation planning.” [68].

81. Quirin Schiermeier (Nature News analyst) (2011): “Likelihood
of extreme rainfall may have been doubled by rising greenhouse-gas levels. Climate
change may be hitting home. Rises in global average temperature are remote from
most people's experience, but two studies in this week's Nature
conclude that climate warming is already causing extreme weather events that
affect the lives of millions. The research directly links rising greenhouse-gas
levels with the growing intensity of rain and snow in the Northern Hemisphere,
and the increased risk of flooding in the United Kingdom… There is no doubt
that humans are altering the climate, but the implications for regional weather
are less clear. No computer simulation can conclusively attribute a given
snowstorm or flood to global warming. But with a combination of climate models,
weather observations and a good dose of probability theory, scientists may be
able to determine how climate warming changes the odds. An earlier study, for
example, found that global warming has at least doubled the likelihood of
extreme events such as the 2003 European heatwave… By running thousands of
high-resolution seasonal forecast simulations with or without the effect of
greenhouse gases, Myles Allen of the University of Oxford, UK, and his
colleagues found that anthropogenic climate change may have almost doubled the
risk of the extremely wet weather that caused the floods” [68].

82. Dr Gabriele Hegerl (climate researcher at the University
of Edinburgh, UK), commenting on research by herself and her colleagues linking
climate change to floods (2011): “We can now say with some confidence that the
increased rainfall intensity in the latter half of the twentieth century cannot
be explained by our estimates of internal climate variability”. [68].

83. Dr Myles Allen (University
of Oxford, UK)
commenting on research by himself and his colleagues linking climate change to
floods (2011): “What has been considered a 1-in-100-years event in a stationary
climate may actually occur twice as often in the future… Governments plan to
spend some US$100 billion on climate adaptation by 2020, although presently no
one has an idea of what is an impact of climate change and what is just bad
weather… If rich countries are to financially compensate the losers of climate
change, as some poorer countries would expect, you'd like to have an objective
scientific basis for it.” [68].

84. Robert Muir-Wood (chief research officer with RMS, a
company headquartered in Newark, California, that constructs risk models for
the insurance industry) (2011). "This is a key part of our research agenda
and insurance companies do accept the premise [that there could be a link
between climate change and extreme weather]. If there's evidence that risk is
changing, then this is something we need to incorporate in our models.” [68].

85.
Seung-Ki Min, Xuebin Zhang, Francis W. Zwiers (Climate Research Division,
Environment Canada, Toronto, Ontario M3H5T4, Canada) and Gabriele C. Hegerl (School of
GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK) (2011): “Extremes
of weather and climate can have devastating effects on human society and the
environment. Understanding past changes in the characteristics of such events,
including recent increases in the intensity of heavy precipitation events over
a large part of the Northern Hemisphere land area, is critical for reliable
projections of future changes. Given that atmospheric water-holding capacity is
expected to increase roughly exponentially with temperature—and that
atmospheric water content is increasing in accord with this theoretical
expectation—it has been suggested that human-influenced global warming may be
partly responsible for increases in heavy precipitation. Because of the limited
availability of daily observations, however, most previous studies have
examined only the potential detectability of changes in extreme precipitation
through model–model comparisons. Here we show that human-induced increases in
greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy
precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts
of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of
observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the
latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting
technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the
impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated
because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy
precipitation with warming.” [69].

86.
Pardeep Pall, Dáithí A. Stone & Myles R. Allen (Institute for Atmospheric
and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland), Tolu Aina (Tyndall
Centre Oxford, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK)
, Peter A, Stott (Met Office Hadley Centre, Fitzroy Road, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK),
Toru Nozawa (National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Ibaraki
305-8506, Japan), Arno G. J. Hilberts & Dag Lohmann (Risk Management
Solutions Ltd, London EC3R 8NB, UK) (2011): “Interest in attributing the risk
of damaging weather-related events to anthropogenic climate change is increasing.
Yet climate models used to study the attribution problem typically do not
resolve the weather systems associated with damaging events such as the UK floods of
October and November 2000. Occurring during the wettest autumn in England and Wales since records began in 1766,
these floods damaged nearly 10,000 properties across that region, disrupted
services severely, and caused insured losses estimated at £1.3billion.
Although the flooding was deemed a ‘wake-up call’ to the impacts of climate
change at the time, such claims are typically supported only by general
thermodynamic arguments that suggest increased extreme precipitation under
global warming, but fail to account fully for the complex hydrometeorology
associated with flooding. Here we present a multi-step, physically based
‘probabilistic event attribution’ framework showing that it is very likely that
global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk
of flood occurrence in England and Wales in autumn 2000. Using publicly
volunteered distributed computing, we generate several thousand
seasonal-forecast-resolution climate model simulations of autumn 2000 weather,
both under realistic conditions, and under conditions as they might have been
had these greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting large-scale warming never
occurred. Results are fed into a precipitation-runoff model that is used to
simulate severe daily river runoff events in England
and Wales
(proxy indicators of flood events). The precise magnitude of the anthropogenic
contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results
indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions
increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by
more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.” [70].

87. Dr Pardeep Pall ( researcher at the University of Oxford
and the lead author of a key study published in Nature linking climate change to
floods) (2011): "We found that emissions substantially increased the odds
of floods occurring in ... the record wet autumn of 2000 [in UK], with a likely
increase in odds of about a doubling or more.” [71] .

88. Dr Francis Zwiers (director of the Climate Research
Division of Environment Canada, Toronto, Canada) commenting on key research published
himself and colleagues in Nature linking climate change to floods (2011) “It takes a long time to determine whether
human influence on the climate system was a factor in any particular event… Warmer
air contains more moisture and leads to more extreme precipitation.” [71].

89. Xuebin Zhang (Climate Research Division,
Environment Canada, Toronto, Ontario M3H5T4, Canada), commenting on key research published by
himself and colleagues in Nature linking climate change to floods (2011) "Our research provides the first
scientific evidence that human-induced greenhouse gas increases have
contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events over
large parts of the northern hemisphere.” [71].

90. Sinclair, Knight and Merz (SKM, a leading projects firm, with global
capability in strategic consulting, design and delivery) (2011): “The damage to
public and private infrastructure caused by recent flooding across eastern
Australia highlights the vulnerability of the built environment to extreme
weather events. Flooding is part of the natural cycle of climate variability in
Australia
so the current discussion about whether the recent floods (or the record
breaking drought that preceded them) were caused by climate change
unnecessarily diverts attention away from the urgent need to adapt to climate
extremes. The best available scientific information indicates that climate
change may amplify some aspects of natural climate variability, resulting in
the normalisation of weather events currently considered extreme. There is a
growing body of empirical evidence (especially extreme temperatures, rainfall
and sea levels) suggesting that climate change is already having this effect. In
this context, government and industry need to consider whether current
approaches to infrastructure and settlement planning and design provide an
adequate basis for cost effectively managing the extreme weather events that
might occur in future.” [72].

In conclusion, because the day to day weather is highly variable one cannot
attribute any specific weather event (such as the current Queensland and Eastern Australian floods) to
man-made global warming. However increased precipitation will derive from increased sea
temperature and consequently increased evaporation and increased atmospheric moisture
- and accordingly one cannot exclude the likelihood of a major contribution of man-made
global warming to such extreme precipitation events. Man-made global warming
has already been associated with huge increases in the incidence of flooding
and other climatic disruptions around the world over the last half century or
so. The message is clear: what is needed, as stated by Professor Barry Brook, is
“real, effective and urgent action to eliminate fossil fuels”(see #16).

[43]. James
Hansen, “Storms of My Grandchildren. The truth about the coming climate
catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity”, Bloomsbury, London, 2009 (pp253-254; for further details see: http://www.stormsofmygrandchildren.com/
).